Coast clearing for food trucks

Will.Dickey@Jacksonville.com Sydna Breazeale orders a coffee from Matt Lennon, owner of The Loving Cup, at a site near Baptist Medical Center South, on Thursday. Lennon is one of the mobile food operators who has applied for a permit from Jacksonville Beach.

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After four attempts, Matt Lennon is closer than ever to getting a permit to operate The Loving Cup food truck in Jacksonville Beach.

Lennon left Jacksonville Beach City Hall last week optimistic the city will approve his applications for two sites where he wants to set up shop with his mobile coffee shop. If approved, Lennon will pay the $80 per site permit fee and be good to start selling his fresh coffee and pastries there.

“Hopefully, the fourth time is the charm,” said Lennon, whose previous three attempts ended in frustration because he initially didn’t meet city criteria for a notarized affidavit from the property owner, and an official site plan.

Opinion is mixed among food truck operators about the city’s newly minted regulations and permitting process. Lennon is among those saying the criteria are onerous. However, others say it’s gone smoothly for them and is no more trouble than similar regulations in other cities including Jacksonville.

Five food trucks have received permits in the nearly two months since the Jacksonville Beach City Council voted 5-1, with a member absent, to allow the mobile restaurants to operate in designated areas of the city under specific conditions.

Funkadelic Food Truck applied twice. Initially, it was a little difficult getting the drawn-to-scale site plan together. Amanda Barry, food truck co-owner, said they had to request the site plan from the out-of-town corporate offices of a large business owning a site where they wanted to set up.

“No landlord. No property manager. It has to be the property owner and that is what is so hard about it,” said Barry, adding that it is time-consuming and a possible inconvenience for the corporate personnel to accommodate the food truck’s request.

Anthony Hashem, owner of The Happy Grilled Cheese food truck, is scouting potential locations but hasn’t applied yet. “It’s definitely a daunting process. … They legalized us but they kind of tied our hands a little bit with the paperwork,” he said.

Forbes said getting the appropriate affidavit from a property owner has been the most common complaint about the Jacksonville Beach regulations. The city charging for each site also has produced some grumbles, he said.

“Obviously, you have to have that because it’s private property. We’re not just letting people show on somebody’s property and set up a food truck. …We need to check that [affidavit] to make sure they have the property owner’s permission to be there,” Forbes said.

That and the other regulations are intended to be fair and strike a balance between traditional restaurants and food trucks, as well as respectful of private property owners. Because it’s a pilot program, it’s normal to have some hiccups in the first few weeks, Forbes said.

“We knew from day one that whenever you have something new it takes a while for everybody to adjust to it,” said Forbes, adding that city staffers have been as helpful as they can but food truck operators still have to provide appropriate documentation.

Trip and Ulka Shriver started Backstreets Catering when they lived in Alexandria, Va. The application process and regulations in Jacksonville Beach are “much more reasonable” than in Alexandria, Ulka Shriver said.

“It was much more labor-intensive and required many more panels of council people and professionals in order to approve the application in Alexandria than the Jacksonville Beach process was,” she said.

Overall, the process “didn’t take a whole lot of time. Getting an official site plan and property owner’s affidavit is not difficult,” she said “if you really have an owner who wants you there.” Jacksonville Beach might be tougher than some food truck operators are used to. But it doesn’t seem out of line, Ulka Shriver said.

The permitting “went very smoothly” for Wiki Wiki, said Dianne Darabi, who owns and operates the shaved ice truck. “It took about a week from start to finish. Because we only sell shave ice and pre-packaged ice cream items, we did not have a lengthy vetting process,” she said, adding city employees were helpful and efficient.

James Altman, owner of Grannie’s Chicken, said it’s been a pretty painless process so far, but he wonders how long it might take for a decision on his permit.

The only glitch, he said, was minor. He had to talk to three different people before finding the right one to show his notarized commissary agreement for properly disposing of grease and used water, Altman said.

“It really hasn’t been any more difficult than trying to get the Jacksonville license, to me,” Altman said.

The city of Jacksonville charges food truck operators a $30 license business tax. Food trucks pay $250 for either a fixed location permit or a non-site-specific permit which allows them to roam and set up at different locations. Some food trucks have both a fixed location and a non-site-specific permit. Jacksonville does require a notarized letter from the property owner granting permission, said Michael Love, chief of tax operations at the Duval County Tax Collector’s Office.

Jacksonville Beach is allowing food trucks in a one-year pilot program. The trucks are limited to the central business district, areas zoned commercial and some existing redevelopment and planned urban development districts. About two dozen properties in the central business district meet those requirements. One truck is allowed if the property is 6,000 square feet. Up to two food trucks are allowed at the same time as long as the site is at least an acre.

That might deter some food truck operators, said Corner Taco’s Chris Dickerson, who along with Patrick O’Grady of Driftwood BBQ were among the food truck operators calling for Jacksonville Beach to allow the businesses.

“To follow the rules as they are written, it is expensive and there is just not that much revenue. And because you can only be on private property, there is not that much revenue to justify the extra layer of hurdles,” Dickerson said.

Neither Dickerson nor O’Grady have applied as yet. O’Grady said the city’s regulations “probably are as tight as restrictions can get.”

“I would be hopeful that next year they will look at it and realize, ‘hey, maybe we did make this a little too strict,’ and they do open it up a little bit more. I can’t see them getting any tighter with it,” O’Grady said.